Course Design and Assessment Planning

Begin by assessing the specific context of your course, as this shapes all subsequent planning decisions. Consider the following:

• Course context: Level, class size, and format – in-person, online, or blended. A large active learning course, for instance, might use assessments differently than a small seminar.
• Student characteristics: Consider measuring prior knowledge, backgrounds, and motivations through low-key assessments in week 1. If possible, adjust your course complexity and pace accordingly, keeping in mind that general education classes often require broader examples than major-specific courses.
• Instructor factors: It is important to acknowledge your own characteristics as a teacher, such as skill-level, experience, and philosophy of teaching.
• Logistical and institutional constraints: Available resources, class size and frequency, and duration. Consider resource availability such as room configuration or technology tools that are readily available based on the needs of the class.

Understanding these factors ensures your course design and assessments are realistic and tailored to your specific teaching environment.

Clear learning goals explicitly state what students will know or do by course completion. Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to identify appropriate cognitive levels, ranging from basic recall to complex creation, and lists of verbs to help create measurable outcomes.

Bloom’s Taxonomy includes:

• Remembering: define, list, recall
• Understanding: describe, explain, summarize
• Applying: implement, solve, use
• Analyzing: differentiate, organize, compare
• Evaluating: critique, judge, defend
• Creating: design, construct, produce

For example, rather than stating students will "understand the causes of climate change," specify they will "analyze key factors contributing to climate change and evaluate their impacts." Ensure goals are measurable, specific, and student-centered, clearly guiding the assessments and learning activities you will choose next.

Backward design, made popular by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in their framework Understanding by Design, emphasizes starting with clear outcomes to determine appropriate assessments before planning learning activities. For each learning goal, decide how you will know students achieved it:

• Alignment: Match each learning goal to a corresponding assessment method. If a goal involves analyzing arguments, assess via essays or presentations requiring critical evaluation.
• Formative assessments: Low-stakes check-in’s like quizzes, reflection papers, and in-class polls provide ongoing feedback, enabling adjustments before larger, summative assessments. (See the Harnessing Student Feedback webpage for more information.)

Summative assessments: Higher-stakes evaluations (final exams, major projects) that measure cumulative learning at course end.

Clearly defined criteria and rubrics transparently communicate expectations and help students understand how their work will be evaluated. The Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework emphasizes three components: purpose, task, and criteria.

• Purpose: Clearly state why students are completing the assessment and its relevance to course goals.
• Task: Describe specifically what students must do in writing and verbally.
• Criteria: Provide explicit benchmarks or standards students’ work will be measured against.

Rubrics should clearly outline levels of performance, describing precisely what differentiates exemplary, satisfactory, and insufficient work, thereby reducing confusion and improving student performance.

With learning goals and assessments defined, plan the learning activities (assignments, discussions, projects, labs) that prepare students to meet those goals.Key considerations:

• Alignment with outcomes: Activities should adequately prepare students for assessments. For instance, if students must write analytical essays, provide practice through structured discussions or brief written reflections.
• Engagement and variety: Mix lectures with active learning techniques such as group problem-solving, debates, or peer reviews. In STEM, pair brief lectures with demonstrations; in humanities, follow readings with small-group analyses.
• Scaffolding: Break complex tasks into smaller, manageable steps. A semester-long research project might start with topic proposals, followed by annotated bibliographies, drafts, and revisions.
• Context sensitivity: Match activities to class size and classroom environment. Use technology strategically—large classes might benefit from interactive polling or discussion boards, while smaller groups can engage more deeply in seminar-style discussions.

Effective activities are intentional, varied, authentic, and clearly tied to achieving the learning outcomes you've identified.

Feedback on student work is most impactful when it is timely, clear, actionable, and future-oriented. Effective feedback goes beyond identifying errors or shortcomings; it offers specific suggestions for improvement and ways to apply insights in future tasks.

Consider these strategies for impactful feedback:

• Provide prompt responses so students can immediately reflect and improve.
• Highlight specific strengths to reinforce effective practices.
• Clearly identify areas for improvement and suggest concrete steps students can take next time.
• Encourage reflection by posing questions that prompt students to think critically about their own learning processes.

Integrating these feedback approaches helps students understand precisely how to enhance future performance, creating a supportive and growth-oriented learning environment.

The final step ensures coherence by aligning learning outcomes, assessments, and activities. Create a simple alignment table to visually confirm each goal has corresponding assessments and activities. This identifies gaps, redundancies, or misalignments.

Ask:

• Does each learning outcome have a corresponding assessment?
• Are activities clearly connected to both outcomes and assessments?
• Is the course balanced and achievable given your situational constraints (time, resources, student preparedness)?

For example, if you have identified a high-level goal for your course like "creating original designs" but your assessments focus on remembering and understanding only, an adjustment to include project-based assessments will better meet your learning objectives. 

Regularly revisiting this alignment helps maintain a coherent course structure, ultimately creating a cohesive learning journey that enhances student engagement and success.